Today, we woke up to a rocket blast. The sound was so loud that it seemed to come from our building’s entryway. The windows shook, the parrot screeched, and the Doberman dashed into the bathroom. Good morning.
The blast had thundered in absolute silence: there had been no warnings on the online message boards. I even wrote to the neighborhood chat, asking whether this was the consequence of the U.S. refusing to provide us with intelligence or not. People suggested that there had been an alert, it had just lasted over eleven hours.
I got the engraved collar out of the closet. I don’t use it much: the color is too bright and it soils easily. But it has Hector’s name and my phone number printed on it in very big letters and numbers. I put it on him during heavy shelling. If there’s a blast nearby and the dog runs away from me in fear, I have a better chance of finding him.
We went outside. In the middle of the courtyard stood a young woman holding a baby in her arms. The baby was wrapped in a warm blanket, while the mother was wearing a robe and slippers. It was cold.
Having seemingly sized up my silent question, she made excuses in a recitative.
“He was frightened by the explosions, I couldn’t calm him down, he falls asleep better in the fresh air, I was scared to go out on the balcony because of the windows, so we ran out here.”
I offered to hold her baby while she went inside to get dressed.
The woman became anxious and clutched her bundle even more tightly, her hands reddened from the cold.
“No, no, God forbid!”
The maternal instinct is the strongest. That’s the way the world works.
I often remember a terrible story that happened in Kharkov. A gas cylinder exploded in an ordinary block of flats. It was December 2012. A man had brought the cylinder into his family’s flat, where he lived with his wife, three daughters, and tiny grandson. The cylinder exploded, the fire was fierce, and only one of the girls survived by some miracle.
I was working as a field journalist at the time. We were shooting a routine report nearby, and after our editor called, we rushed to the scene. We were the first to arrive, before the ambulances.
I won’t describe the horror we saw. Charred toys scattered around a yard were not a familiar sight in Kharkov thirteen years ago.
I will always remember what the eldest daughter did. Her name was Luba, and she was barely in her twenties. She was able to escape a room engulfed in flames onto the balcony. She was holding her seven-year-old sister Sasha with one hand, while with the other she clutched her ten-month-old son Klim to her chest.
Yes, I do remember their names.
Luba was screaming. People heard her and saw her, but they had no time to do anything. That young woman and very young mom jumped from the tenth floor — on her back. That was how she had tried to save her baby.
God, how strong her maternal instinct must have been to have stepped into the abyss like that, trying to save her baby.
I think about it often.
My daughter and I were chatting on the phone the other day as she was going home from work. She’s in Israel now, and we usually call each other when she’s on the bus home. Right as we were talking, Sashka read aloud the news that terrorists had planted bombs on buses in Tel Aviv.
“Get off the bus now!” I shouted into the phone.
It was another three minutes to the next stop.
In those three minutes, in those one hundred and eighty seconds, I didn’t just turn gray, age, and die. I killed and dismembered every terrorist on the planet, and I torched their homes, their cities, and their families.
Yes, it was maternal instinct.
Tomorrow is the eighth of March. The world has different ways of marking this day. In some places, the day is about gender equality and emancipation, while in other places it’s about the arrival of spring, a new hairdryer, and a teddy bear. But either way, it’s about women. There will be lots of flowers and lots of cards.
I also want to send a card to all the women of the world. With flowers, from Ukraine.
There’s nothing more monstrous than the “picture” on card. It shows Anya, my neighbor, and her only child, Artyom.
P.S. Whoever can, please pass my card on to the women in the American Congress who applauded their leader yesterday. Tell them that after their tumultuous applause and cheering about “billions of dollars saved,” a young woman stands in the middle of a courtyard in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. Wearing a robe and slippers, she rocks her baby in the cold. He was frightened by the Russian missile which struck the neighboring courtyard.
Source: Anna Gin (Facebook), 7 March 2025. Translated, from the Russian, by the Russian Reader. Anna Gin is a blogger, writer, and journalist who lives in Kharkov (Kharkiv). You can also follow her on Telegram. Thanks to Alya Legeyda for the heads-up.
After talking to relatives in Kharkiv, once again shelled by Russia, and hearing news of the missile strike on one of Ukraine’s largest printing plants, I touch the bindings of the books on my shelves. I think about how many of them were printed in that same city, now very much on the frontlines again. This time it was not only transport and urban infrastructure that were targeted but books as well.
Factor Druk is one of the largest full-cycle printing plants in Europe. It is part of the large Factor holding, which includes, among other companies, Vivat, one of the top Ukrainian publishing houses, which has its own network of bookstores. Factor’s customers include not only Ukrainian publishers but also such global publishers as Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan.
I look at the kaleidoscope of photos—the burnt-out shop floors, the waves of pages, the scattered covers (one—oh, the bitter irony!—bears the title “The Club of the Rescued”)—and wonder how much a Russian missile costs. The internet, for example, reports that an Iskander runs for around three million dollars. Instead of “liberating” us from twenty thousand books a week before Book Arsenal, Ukraine’s most important book fair, the aggressors could, say, print themselves a few more copies of books by their own classic authors. This is not the first such strike, by the way. On 20 March of this year, Russian forces hit another printing plant in Kharkiv where many Ukrainian publishers also had their books printed.
The Factor Druk printing plant, damaged by a Russian missile strike on Kharkiv. Photo: Nicolas Cleuet/Le Pictorium/MAXPPP/dpa/picture alliance
Solidarity in response to terror
But the further away they are from Ukraine, the less people in the rest of the world understand the symbolism of these events. As the well-known Ukrainian journalist Kristina Berdynskykhwrote on her Facebook page, “Three days ago, I bought the diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko, as published by Vivat. [Vakulenko’s] shot corpse was found in a grave in a forest outside Izium in autumn 2022. The diary was found by Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who unearthed it in a courtyard near the house where he lived during the occupation. Amelina died [from the wounds she suffered during] the missile strike on Kramatorsk in 2023. The plant where this book was printed was destroyed by a Russian missile strike today, in 2024. ‘Volodymyr Vakulenko kept a diary during the occupation, hoping that you, the world, might be able to hear him. If you are holding this book in your hands, the writer Vakulenko has won,’ Victoria writes in the foreword. Hold books printed in Ukraine in your hands. The world will never understand all the way anyway.”
Ukrainian social networks have been overflowing with solidarity and sympathy. Thousands of people have simply gone and ordered books by their favorite publisher, Vivat, and so for a while, due to the number of orders, the publisher’s website was down, and long queues formed in some bookstores. This is probably the least that can be done now. It is the constructive fact that gathers us every day, in the midst of worries and threats, when just being is a victory in itself.
Bookshops opening in Ukraine during the war against all odds
Against all the odds, new bookshops have been opening in Ukraine amidst the war. Literary events, festivals and book fairs have been taking place. In Kyiv, one major book fair ended a month ago, another is due to start in a week, and two more are planned for the next few months. There are many reports about the growing demand for books. The other day, a bookshop manager I know commented, “People are just jumping on books. This not only furthers the culture but also helps to maintain some level of normality.”
I take one of my favorite Vivat books from the shelf—Lazarus, a novel by Svitlana Taratorina, a Ukrainian author originally from Crimea. It’s a contemporary fantasy set in an alternative magical Kyiv in the early twentieth century. The city is inhabited by both ordinary people and various “impure” creatures such as water sprites, ghouls, and werewolves. Although the book presents an interesting, intriguing and self-contained world of magical adventure, it is not hard to see its political aspect. The human beings in Lazarus come to Kyiv from the Empire. They try to impose their centralized way of life on the city, seeking to neutralizing its peculiarities and nuances, to level anything outside the imperial framework, anything “impure,” that is. This clampdown eventually and inevitably leads to an explosion. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Everything can be restored but people cannot be brought back to life
It is a day of mourning in Kharkiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has visited the site of the attack.
“The production facility was destroyed, and tens of thousands of books were burned by this strike. A lot of children’s literature, manuals, and textbooks…. Russian terror should never go unpunished,” he said.
Seven workers were killed at the printing plant: five women and two men who were printing children’s books that day. Twenty-one people were injured. As Elena Rybka, editor-in-chief of the publishing house, wrote, “Everything can be restored. It is impossible to bring people back to life. We sympathize with the families of the victims. We pray for the wounded. We support Ukrainian culture, because it will never be beyond politics.”
Julia Stakhivska is a Ukrainian writer who has published books of poetry and fantasy stories for children and co-edited anthologies of Ukrainian poetry.
Russia’s strike on the Factor Druk printing house killed seven workers and left 16 wounded, according to Suspilne. The company estimates that 20,000 books were destroyed, of which 40 percent were schoolbooks.
Factor Druk printed around half of Ukraine’s schoolbooks, CEO Serhii Polituchniy said in an interview with Radio Liberty.
“I don’t know how we will print tomorrow,” he added. The strike on the company’s printing facilities stands to reduce the volume of Ukraine’s publishing industry by 40 percent, according to Polituchniy’s estimates.
Three out of 10 leading publishing companies in Ukraine are located in Kharkiv which is constantly under Russian missile assault. Factor Druk did not evacuate its facilities from its location, around 40 kilometers from Russia’s border, due to the complexities and costs involved.
Polituchniy stated that most publishing professionals have chosen to stay in Kharkiv rather than move westward, where the right skills and knowledge are believed to be harder to find. “One should teach a professional for 4-5 years minimum,” Polituchniy said.
Industry leader
Factor Druk became a founder of Vivat Publishing House, one of the most prominent and popular book brands in the country, printing non-fiction and fiction books in the Ukrainian language. In 2023, Vivat became the seventh largest in Ukraine’s book publishing industry, with Hr. 191 million in revenue (almost $5 million), according to Pro-Consulting estimates provided to Kyiv Post.
Ukraine’s honey exports amounted to almost a third of the commodity’s imports to the EU in the last year, with China taking the leading position.
Vivat’s two bestsellers include Winston Churchill’s biography written by ex-UK prime minister Boris Johnson (50,000 books sold) and “Stus’s Case” – a novel about how the KGB arrested and tried Vasyl Stus, Ukraine’s poet, translator, literary critic, journalist, and an active member of the Ukrainian dissident movement. Around 120,000 copies of the book have been sold.
In addition to books, Factor Druk prints newspapers and magazines, booklets, catalogs, as well as stationery products such as calendars, notebooks and school diaries according to the company’s website.
The company also prints for other publishers, including:
Industry leaders KSD and Folio (both also Kharkiv-based)
Schoolbooks publishing company Ranok
Faith books publishing house Svichado
Children’s publishing house Zelenyy Pes
Vivat forms the majority of Factor Druk’s revenues. Overall, between 2017 and 2023, Factor Druk generated Hr. 230 million ($5.7 million) as an annual average, according to the company’s financial statements on Vkursi big data platform. The enterprise did not generate losses even during the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s publishing industry includes 385 publishing enterprises of different sizes, 200 of them each generating more than Hr. 1 million (£25,000) in revenues in 2023, according to Pro-Consulting’s data provided to Kyiv Post.
Well I turned around in time to see the clouds fade Running back could only make them stay Forward now I run down a winding road Try to pay back everything that I have ever owed
And when your money runs, will you buy a friend? And when your guns don’t fire, will that be the end? With no land left to burn, and nowhere left to run Where then can we stand when it’s all said and done?
Well I hear the thunder roll, I feel the cold winds blowing But you won’t find me there, ’cause I won’t go back again While you’re on smoky roads, I’ll be out in the sun Where the trees still grow, where they count by one?
Well you take from our schools to build a bigger bomb You tell us fiery lies about the course we’re on And you’ll kill all the world, and you’ll reverse the sun And which would you sell first, your soul or your gun?
But I hear the thunder roll, I feel the cold wind blowing But you won’t find me there, ’cause I won’t go back again While you’re on smoky roads I’ll be out in the sun Where the trees still grow, where they count by one?
אין דער צוקונפֿט־שטאָט עדעניאַ In Edenia, a City of the Future
Yermilov Center, Kharkiv
June 8–July 9, 2017
In Edenia, a City of the Future is an art exhibition inspired by the eponymous Yiddish-language utopian novella, published by Kalman Zingman in Kharkiv in 1918. Nearly one hundred years later, artist Yevgeniy Fiks has invited an international group of contemporary artists to read the novella and create artworks as if they were from the museum of the imaginary city of Edenia. The artists’ different visions are an invitation to look at our dreams from various angles, to take note of their colors, intonations, forms and rhythms.
Zingman’s Edenia (a projection of Kharkiv twenty-five years in the future) is serviced by “airbuses” and fountains that keep the temperature at a comfortable level year-round; it is a place where ethnic communities live side by side in peace and harmony. The protagonist of the story, returned to his native city from Palestine, makes a stop in the art museum: “He […] looked at the sculptures of Kritsenshteyn, Lisitski and Roza Fayngold, then he went to the top level. The door closed behind him, and he looked for a very long time, thought for a long time, and got lost in his ruminations.”
At a time when many Ukrainians are divided in their respective idealizations of the Soviet past as a golden era of social justice or the European Union as the promise of a future utopia, In Edenia, a City of the Future (based on a novella written in a language that has practically disappeared from Ukraine) invites the public to examine the country’s multicultural history and its early Soviet dreams and nightmares in light of present-day political challenges and potentialities. We urge visitors to think critically about the appeal and comfort of a utopian dream, while simultaneously remembering past actions taken in the name of making an ideal image of society a reality. How many of these dreams and arguments are we still repeating today?
At the same time, we acknowledge the utopian nature of the very project of 21st-century contemporary art, where visibility (as revelation) has come to replace the visionary projects of the past.
Curators: Larissa Babij (Ukraine/US) and Yevgeniy Fiks (US/Russia)
Exhibition designer: Ivan Melnychuk (Ukraine)
Publishing partner: STAB (School of Theory and Activism Bishkek) (Kyrgyzstan)
Supported by Asylum Arts
Special thanks to Dr. Gennadiy Estraikh
About the Curators
Yevgeniy Fiks is a Russian-American artist, who has been living and working in New York since 1994. His artistic practice, which includes making artworks, exhibitions, and books, often seeks out and explores repressed microhistorical narratives that highlight the complex relationships between social histories of the West and the Soviet bloc in the 20th century. To learn more, please see http://yevgeniyfiks.com.
Larissa Babij grew up in the US and has been living and working in Kyiv as an independent curator, writer and translator since 2005. Her work focuses on representing Ukrainian contemporary artists in the English-speaking world, organizing contemporary art projects (usually in collaboration with artists) in Ukraine, and critically discussing current cultural conditions.
The exhibition will involve several public events, including guided tours with the exhibition curators, meetings with participating artists, and talks by historians specializing in early Soviet Ukrainian history. Please see www.yermilovcentre.org for details.
*****
A short excerpt from the translation of novella, as kindly supplied to me by Mr. Fiks.
“Where then do you hide the corpses? Or has the Angel of Death discovered another way?”
“Don’t laugh, my friend. For years, our Medical Institute has been conducting tests on rabbits and other animals that have died or been killed, squirting serum into their noses and bringing them back to life. And the Director of the Institute, Professor Rabinovitch, writes in the journal Health that it is possible that very shortly we will be able to insert a new soul into a person who died of old age and bring him back to life. But for now it is still a medical experiment. Yet you asked where we hide the corpses that have died. And I will answer you. Once we’re in the Green Garden, you will see a 40-story building, the Crematorium. There the corpses are cremated, and the ashes of each one are given a separate number and a box. In addition, very few young people die here. Life is so well ordered that one only dies of old age, of weakness, and not as it used to be, from accidents when young. The older generation dies. There has not been a war for the last twenty-one years. The young people only know the term war from history class in school. The other classes are concerned with guarding their health. In the upper grades, both boys and girls learn about sex, not as they did in our time when they went through all the swamps of life before they got married. Here, in our times, no one knows what the swamps of life are. In addition to natural science, a schoolgirl studies history, literature, culinary arts, sex education, and child-rearing. And if you were to see our young mothers—that is, our children! They are completely different from the children of the past, who used to know life, intimate life, only from the pornographic novels they furtively read.”
